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Don't expand playoff to more than four, Jimbo Fisher says

NEWPORT BEACH, CALIF. — The confetti had barely stopped swirling around the Rose Bowl when talk swung to the next step in determining college football’s national champion, the College Football Playoff.

The system, in which four teams are picked by a selection committee, starts with the 2014 season. The first and fourth seeds and second and third seeds will meet in semifinal games at the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl, and the championship game will be Jan. 12, 2015, in Dallas.

Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher, whose team beat Auburn 34-31 for the final BCS title on Monday at the Rose Bowl, believes four teams and two more games for the final two is quite enough. He also doesn’t want the bowl system diminished.

“We’d better be real careful,” Fisher said on Tuesday during a news conference at the Newport Beach Marriott. “When I was a child, I remembered who won the Sugar Bowl, who won the Orange Bowl, who won the Cotton Bowl, who won the Rose Bowl. It was a big deal to go. We act like that’s not a big deal. We’re so involved in winning a championship that we’re forgetting the tradition and history.”

Bill Hancock, executive director of the BCS and the upcoming CFP, told the Times-Union that a four-team playoff is the right compromise between deciding national championships by polls and a 16-team playoff.

“Four is the right number ... it’s the best number,” he said. “We do not want to diminish the regular season. In college football, it’s all about the regular season. Four gives fans what they want, more football and a bracket.”